Connor is the first MicroActivist and urges other children to join in with keeping beaches debris-free.

From birth, Connor loved the water. It soothed him, drew him in and was always his happy place ... During a trip to visit family in Hawaii, Connor saw a wild monk seal on an early morning walk down the beach (and) he had to learn all there was to learn about the endangered monk seal. Learning how these curious creatures are often entangled in discarded fishing nets and leftover beach trash set the five-year-old on a mission to clean up as many beaches as he could...What started as one little boy's mission to save endangered monk seals has grown into a movement of kids determined to change the fate of the oceans!

The Aquarium of the Pacific has awarded Connor with the 2017 Youth Hero of the Year Award for his ongoing efforts on ocean conservation. And he earned the 2017 Earth Warrior Hero Award.

Kids can join Connor in ocean conservation like these boys and girls pictured below during a recent beach cleanup.

--from Microactivist Foundation

Pickle-like Creatures Invade Pacific West Coast

Pyrosome. (NOAA photo)

There's a garden of pickles growing in the Pacific Ocean!

OK, that's not exactly true, but there aren "Millions of tubular sea creatures called pyrosomes (that) have taken over the Pacific Ocean in an unprecedented bloom," reports an Oregon newspaper.

Scientists are baffled and in a pickle trying to explain these pickle-looking sea creatures.

"These bumpy, translucent organisms look like sea cucumbers that range in size from six inches to more than two feet long...

"And they’re everywhere, filling the waters off the West Coast all the way up to Alaska, and washing up on beaches.

"One research boat caught 60,000 of them in five minutes. They’re so thick in Alaska that fishermen gave up on fishing because their hooks were coming up full of pyrosomes instead of salmon."

Kids Care About Our Oceans!

Marine Debris Art Contest Winner

Congratulations to our Annual NOAA Marine Debris Program Art Contest winners, whom will be featured in the 2018 Marine Debris Calendar! This year, we received more than 500 entries from kindergarten to 8th-grade students with incredible visual messages on what we need to do to be the solution to ocean pollution. Thank you to all the students who participated in this year's contest!

"Dr. Whizzepuff Explains Climate Change

Kids Producing A Film About the Oceans

HEIRS TO OUR OCEANS.  That’s who we are, along with your children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, and newly-spawned zygotes. 

Heirs to our oceans are the next generation and the future generations who will inherit this planet and all that comes with it…. after your generation is done with it.

We live just near the Pacific Ocean.  We have learned about and seen the atrocities to our ocean.  We have studied what is happening to know why action is needed to end the human impact on our planet’s oceans. 

We are sad.  We are mad.  We are motivated.  We are inspired.  We are hopeful.  We are tenacious.  

And together we are taking action.

We are committing this next year, summer 2016 through summer 2017, to diving further into learning about the issues we and our oceans face.  We will take you along in our voyage so that you too might learn and be inspired to join us in our efforts to ensure that the oceans and the magnificent and necessary life within them are on this planet, alive and well, for our generation and our children’s. 

And, we are making a movie.  No not a dull drab documentary.  A movie.  One that will move you, make you laugh, make you cry, make you excited, make you concerned, make you want to change, make you want to encourage others to change, make you want to join us. 

We are the Heirs To Our Oceans, and we have a job to do.

Hop in and ride this wild wave with us.